In May of last year, we had a set of local elections, as indeed we do every May. People don’t talk about the results of them much anymore for several reasons. One, once they come and go, people tend to forget all about the national results of local elections – even though, immediately afterwards, they […]
Archives for March 2018
We’ve gone from “we’re all liberals” to the exact opposite in the last couple of years. What happened?
A few years back, Maurice Glasman, the academic and Labour peer, and Philip Blond, once described as “Cameron’s philosopher king” and founder and director of the think tank Respublica, would run sessions on “Red Toryism v Blue Labour” and how that were not all that far apart. The basic pitch was two pronged: one, social […]
Why May’s mention of the US-Canada border in relation to Ireland has me worried – about the state of the Left
Theresa May spoke in the House yesterday to update the Commons on what the Mansion House speech might mean in practice. In answer to an inevitable question regarding the Irish border, the Prime Minister said: “There are many examples of different arrangements for customs around the rest of the world. Indeed we are looking at […]
Remainers are beginning to lull themselves into a false sense of security that Brexit won’t happen. They’re misguided
Tony Blair has said very recently that he now thinks there is a 50% chance Brexit won’t happen. If you go on Twitter and search through the #FBPE pro-European hashtag, you will find a lot of people who have almost convinced themselves that not only will Brexit not happen, it can’t happen. Remainers are starting […]
First thoughts on Theresa May’s latest Brexit speech – why this should have been the spiel at Lancaster House over a year ago
Reports leading up to today’s speech were mixed. On one hand, Chris Grayling said that “the prime minister will recognise in the speech today that it is not about cherry picking, that we can’t have everything that we might like to have because we are leaving.” This seemed to suggest more realism, which was to […]
The Tories have now picked up one of Labour’s worst habits
It would be an understatement to say that Tory Brexiteers are less than pleased with John Major this morning. The former PM gave a speech to the Creative Industries Federation yesterday in which he gave Brexit a good talking down and called for a second referendum on the matter. It was a pretty in your […]